How to check your EPF balance online

Here is a small primer on how to check your EPF balance online. There have been some questions on how to do this and what the SMS from bz-epfo that comes to your mobiles mean. More on this in a bit.

The EPF (Employee Provident Fund) is a compulsory retirement fund account to be opened by an organization with 20 or more employees. The employer deducts 12% of employees’ basic salary and contributes the same percentage to employee’s provident fund account.

The balance of EPF account is not maintained by the organization, hence most of the times employees don’t know how much money is accumulated in their EPF account. The balance is known only when EPF slips are distributed, which usually has a lag of 3-4 years. This method has always been criticized due to such a huge delay as it never tells you how much money you have stacked up for retirement and how that impacts your current financial planning.

Thanks to computer and mobile technology, this time delay has been overcome now. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) which manages EPF India launched a service on 1st July 2011 which let you know the latest EPF balance anytime you want. All you need to do is visit EPFO India website and follow simple steps and get the latest balance on your mobile. Here are the steps with screenshots.

Step by step guide on how to check EPF balance online

Click on “Click Here to know the balance” towards the bottom of the page. You will be taken to the below screen.

Step 3

Select the state where your current EPF account is maintained by your organization. I am taking Karnataka as an example.

Step 4

After selecting the state you will get the list of EPF offices in the selected state. Select the EPF office from the list provided. This should generally be the city where you are working or your office is located. I am taking Bangalore as an example.

Note the right most column “Availability of Data” will tell you the date till when the EPF data (or balance) is available in that particular office. This is nothing but your “EPF Balance as of” date.

Step 5

In the next screen enter your details very carefully. All fields are mandatory.

1.) Employee PF account number: This can found on your PF slip. If you don’t have the PF slip you can get the EPF account number from your company.

To take an example, suppose the EPF account has a number KN/12345/678 in the EPF statement slip which your employer gives.
In that case 12345 will be the establishment code and 678 will be the account number .
You need to enter the establishment code in the third text field (shown as 00012345) and the account number in the last (shown as 0001234). The second blank text filed (shown as 000) is the sub code or extension of the establishment code.

2.) Name (as appears in EPF slip): As suggested enter your name as it appears on the EPF slip. Again you can confirm from your company if you have any doubt.

3.) Mobile: Enter the mobile number where you want to receive a SMS message on your latest EPF balance.

After filling all the personal details, select I Agree and click Submit. The SMS should come to your mobile number within 15 minutes. The SMS will come from sender BZEPFO and employers contribution (ER) and employees’ contribution (EE) is shown separately.

Important: Don’t play with fake numbers or try to access someone else’s details, it is illegal and the following warning message will be displayed on the screen as below : –

Try this and let us know via comments whether you were able to check your epf balance online and if not, what the issues were. Lastly, here is an infographics to showcase these steps.

Great job, with screenshots its very easy to get this information.
Hopefully many people would benefit with it. Keep up the good work.
PPF authorities should updated the data faster, for most cities it is updated until 31/03/2011 which is almost one year back.

I had an EPF account of more than 10 years, when i checked the status of the account online it was in-operative. Does anyone know the process to make it operative. Not sure if the organization which i worked for still exists.

I did call EPF customer care and they said that i need to fill a couple of forms and a third form will have to be filled by my employer. I am not sure if my employer still exists and i have moved to a different city.
Wanted to know if any readers had any previous experience

i tried with my epf number, but i am facing issue like
“STATUS for Member ID: TB/TAM/00xxxxx/000/000xxxx
Data not available. For detail’s please contact respective EPF Office”. Please let me know what could be the problem.